Electronic commerce has been responsible for a large portion of economic growth in the last two decades. Customer behavior is an essential part of e-commerce. In recent years, even brick-and-mortar companies have significantly ramped up customer data collection and analyses to improve marketing communications to customers, and for providing the right products to the right customers. A common practice in customer behavior analyses is to segment customers into multiple categories based on customer's shopping behavior, income, gender, geographic locations. Marketing and sales can be tailored to serve different customer segments.
There is a need for more accurately and more timely understand customers' behaviors in order to guide marketing, and to provide relevant product and services.